About Me

Thursday, July 07, 2016

* This is my article last week, a day before the inauguration of President Duterte. His inauguration speech was good, no expletives, no PI, no "kill dozens/thousands", very Presidential.

State-sponsored murders can be the hallmark of the
incoming President Rodrigo Duterte administration. Criminal adjudication and
the correctional system will take a backseat as suspected drug pushers/users,
thieves and other criminals will simply be killed outright.

Mr. Duterte announced last June 25 in Cebu that “This
will be finished. Six years. You just think if I will kill 10 per day.” That is
nearly 22,000 dead people in six years, whether real or falsely-accused.

So far, the death toll of drug-related murders from May
10 to June 25 has reached 59, according to The Philippine Star report. That is
an average of 1.3 deaths per day and Mr. Duterte is not officially President
yet.

I have no sympathy whatsoever with drug lords, drug
pushers, and hardened drug users/addicts who steal and commit other crimes.
Various law enforcement agencies should catch and bring them to jail. Give
explicit signals of near certainty of arrest of law violators, especially the
laws against murder, rape and stealing. Their faces, full names and aliases can
be publicized.

These triple measures of near certainty of arrest +
actual imprisonment + public posting of faces would be enough to significantly
reduce criminality in the country. If the criminals themselves will not be
ashamed of their imprisonment and publication of their faces in some papers,
their families, relatives and friends will be ashamed and they will exert
pressure on these people to mend their ways.

Outright murders, publicly-announced state-sponsored
murders, send a signal that due process to some falsely accused individuals
will be skipped. Some may have stolen chickens or cell phones but they were
accused of drug dealing and are given summary execution as penalty.

The World Justice Project (WJP) produces an annual study,
the “Rule of Law Index” (RLI) and score countries based on their performance on
8 factors and 44 sub-factors. The eight factors are: (1) Constraints on
Government Powers, (2) Absence of Corruption, (3) Open Government, (4)
Fundamental Rights, (5) Order and Security, (6) Effective Regulatory
enforcement, (7) Civil Justice, and (8) Criminal Justice.

The WJP’s Index team has developed a set of
questionnaires based on the Index’s conceptual framework, then it engaged 300+
(average) potential local experts per country to respond to the experts’
questionnaires, and engaged the services of leading local polling companies to
implement the household surveys.

Polling companies conduct a survey of the general public
in consultation with the Index team. The team sends the questionnaires to local
experts and engage them in continual interaction. Then the team collects and
maps the data onto the 44 sub-factors with global comparability and construct
the final scores.

In the RLI 2015 Report, the Philippines scored 0.53 and
ranked 51st overall out of 102 countries covered. The factor that heavily
pulled down its overall score is #8, Criminal Justice, where it ranked 66th out
of 102. Here is the score of the Philippines in comparison with its East Asian
neighbors. The Philippines’ score in 2014 is also included (see table).

What are the implications and challenges for the
Philippines’ Judiciary and Executive agencies involved in justice
administration and enforcement?

One, address the issue of (a) corruption in the
correctional system that may even increase some criminal behavior, and (b)
discrimination and exceptions in enforcing the criminal system. In these two
sub-factors the Philippines scored very low.

Two, address also the problems in (c) criminal
adjudication, make it more timely, (d) undue interference of some government
officials in enforcing the criminal system, and (e) disrespect for due process
of those falsely accused. These three sub-factors also contributed to low score
of the Philippines. The new policy of state-sponsored murders will further
adversely affect our justice system.

Our developed neighbors Singapore, South Korea, Japan,
and Hong Kong do not have any policy of state-sponsored murders or even a death
penalty. Stricter observance of the rule of law and having near-certainty of
fines and/or imprisonment against law violators make them low-crime,
low-corruption, economically-dynamic nations.

This is the kind of criminal justice system that we need,
not state-sponsored murders.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the head of Minimal
Government Thinkers, a Fellow of SEANET and member of the Economic Freedom
Network (EFN) Asia.